GO1 is doing big things in the industry
It's all happening quickly for the four founders of training software-as-a-service startup GO1, who last week received $1 million in funding from Shark Tank's Steve Baxter and Tank Stream Ventures, while resident at the Y Combinator accelerator's northern summer program.
The $1 million from Baxter and Tank Stream, which is in the form of a convertible note, is in addition to Y Combinator's standard equity deal with its startups of 7 per cent in exchange for the program and $US120,000 seed funding.
The funding will go toward sales and support staff for GO1's platform, which has been white-labelled by corporations in six continents and now trains 150,000 of their staff, according to co-founder and CEO Andrew Barnes.
An economist who's almost completed a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University mastering in education technology, Barnes started a web agency in 2005 while at a Brisbane high school with his three co-founders - Vu Tran (now a medical doctor), Chris Eigeland (a lawyer) and Chris Hood (an engineer).
"We were building websites for the likes of ANZ and News Corp, and also fielding repeat requests to build learning portals and training systems," he tells BRW from Y Combinator's Mountain View, California campus.
"Eventually we decided to invest time in building a single training portal accessible at an affordable price to any employee, instead of continuing to bill by the hour for standalone systems. We shut the web agency and launched GO1 early in 2014.".
Organisations that have white-labelled GO1 include the Queensland Government, National Australia Bank and Seek. They can submit their own compliance training materials for tweaking by the startup, or choose from a menu of pre-existing courses.
The emphasis is on providing a dynamic, empowering experience for employees, rather than the boredom and "resentment" one usually associates with mandatory employee training, Barnes says.
{For instance he told TechCrunch that instead of a generic 50-slide PowerPoint presentation about why listening is important, a GO1 course might feature a TED Talk by an Army general followed by two multiple-choice questions about how his story applies to your job.|He told TechCrunch that instead of a generic 50-slide PowerPoint presentation about why listening is important, a GO1 course might feature a TED Talk by an Army general followed by two multiple-choice questions about how his story applies to your job.}
"{Companies and businesses|Businesses and companies} can mistakenly fall into the trap of overlooking workplace training because they see it as an inconvenience," says Steve Baxter, whose history of support for Queensland entrepreneurship will continue with his underwriting a second StartUp Catalyst mission to Silicon Valley in September. "Not only are there issues with this mindset legally speaking, but the undesirable impact on staff is also notable.".
He says it follows that GO1's potential market is "huge".
The $1 million from Baxter and Tank Stream, which is in the form of a convertible note, is in addition to Y Combinator's standard equity deal with its startups of 7 per cent in exchange for the program and $US120,000 seed funding.
The funding will go toward sales and support staff for GO1's platform, which has been white-labelled by corporations in six continents and now trains 150,000 of their staff, according to co-founder and CEO Andrew Barnes.
An economist who's almost completed a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University mastering in education technology, Barnes started a web agency in 2005 while at a Brisbane high school with his three co-founders - Vu Tran (now a medical doctor), Chris Eigeland (a lawyer) and Chris Hood (an engineer).
"We were building websites for the likes of ANZ and News Corp, and also fielding repeat requests to build learning portals and training systems," he tells BRW from Y Combinator's Mountain View, California campus.
"Eventually we decided to invest time in building a single training portal accessible at an affordable price to any employee, instead of continuing to bill by the hour for standalone systems. We shut the web agency and launched GO1 early in 2014.".
Organisations that have white-labelled GO1 include the Queensland Government, National Australia Bank and Seek. They can submit their own compliance training materials for tweaking by the startup, or choose from a menu of pre-existing courses.
The emphasis is on providing a dynamic, empowering experience for employees, rather than the boredom and "resentment" one usually associates with mandatory employee training, Barnes says.
{For instance he told TechCrunch that instead of a generic 50-slide PowerPoint presentation about why listening is important, a GO1 course might feature a TED Talk by an Army general followed by two multiple-choice questions about how his story applies to your job.|He told TechCrunch that instead of a generic 50-slide PowerPoint presentation about why listening is important, a GO1 course might feature a TED Talk by an Army general followed by two multiple-choice questions about how his story applies to your job.}
"{Companies and businesses|Businesses and companies} can mistakenly fall into the trap of overlooking workplace training because they see it as an inconvenience," says Steve Baxter, whose history of support for Queensland entrepreneurship will continue with his underwriting a second StartUp Catalyst mission to Silicon Valley in September. "Not only are there issues with this mindset legally speaking, but the undesirable impact on staff is also notable.".
He says it follows that GO1's potential market is "huge".